A levy is best described as what?

• A. The exemption amount
• B. The total tax amount levied based on the assessment
• C. The interest rate on taxes
• D. The assessed value

Answer: (B)

A levy is the total amount of property taxes a municipality plans to collect for the year. It is determined by applying the local tax rate to each property’s assessed value and summing across all parcels. Exemptions or abatements reduce a individual property’s tax bill, but they don’t change what the levy itself is. The assessed value is used to compute taxes, not to define the levy directly, while the interest rate on taxes relates to penalties for late payment, not the levy amount. So the levy represents the total tax revenue the municipality intends to raise, based on the assessment data.